Best Movie Posters: Unofficial Typography Posters for Famous Films

Typography has been around since the 19th century, when stamps were used with rearranged lettering for traditional printing presses.

Today, there is a different technique but the general idea is the same. It is the placement of letters to be printed in a certain order and way, and has become increasingly popular for typography posters, as well as print advertising and marketing.

There are many examples of typography genres, but today we will be looking at typography posters that have been inspired by famous (or infamous) films.

Because this is common, I have selected ten typography posters that I think are the best movie posters that use typography effectively.

The below posters all have something in common:

They are unofficial (meaning they were created by independent designers),

They are all typography artworks;

They all sparkle creativity.

If you liked our selection of the best movie posters that are typographic posters, check out these posts as well:

Nearly everyone recognizes that unforgettable line spoken by Brad Pitt in Fight Club. “The first rule of Fight Club is: You don’t talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: YOU DON’T TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!” This quote has become a staple of modern pop culture, even more than a decade after it was released.

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This poster uses the entire set of rules to make an interesting but simple design. The use of font size to emphasize each point really helps to conjure up the scene from the movie itself.

One of the greatest cult movies of all time, John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson made possibly the greatest – and most foul mouthed – team ever. The movie is more or less timeless, and always great fun to watch. My friends still quote the line, “English, mother f***ker, do you speak it?” at each other from time to time, and we are adults!

This poster shows quotes from the film crammed in to make up the shape of a suitcase. I won’t get into any details of the actual film, in case some people haven’t seen it. But it manages to convey the feel of the movie very well.

While Stephen King has had so many hits it would be hard to count them, one of his most notorious and well loved stories is Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. This novella about prisoner Andy Dufresne who escaped a brutal prison became an incredible movie with Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins.

What I like about this poster is that not only does it feature one of Morgan’s best lines (“Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin'”), but it has the hidden imagery of the faint lines across the letters. This brings up images of prison bars, which is a great and subtle touch.

This page has so many good ones I didn’t want to pick just one. They are made of action movies, and the posters themselves are a little more complex and detailed. The one for Terminator 2: Judgment Dayis probably my favorite, because of the images hidden within the typography itself. But it is also an official poster, which was released around the time of the film.

Another cool one is Rambo, which shows Sylvester Stallone’s face. It takes a second of glancing at it to make out what you are seeing.

Dawn of the Deadis arguably one of the best classic zombie films ever made. Better than most in the ‘Living Dead’ series, it was genuinely terrifying as it stretched the imagination and created a dark and grimy portrayal of the situation.

This poster keeps that dirty feel while providing a sprawling explanation of what they are. Just reading it creeps me out all over again.

These are another type of poster I didn’t feel right choosing just one. They show a typography poster but with a minimalist design. Rather than sprawling text all the way down the page, there are small announcements with a drawing that is subtle but understandable.

My favorite is probably Snatch, which also happens to be one of most famous movies from director Guy Ritchie. It shows a diamond on the bottom of the page, which pretty much gets the point across.

You either love or are horrified by A Clockwork Orange. Stanley Kubrick’s surreal and visually stunning masterpiece is still considered one of the most controversial and offensive films of all time. It studies the concept of violence and change, by pretty much showing those two things colliding in the main character. You see murder, rape, brutality and a very odd film machine. Crazy.

What I love about this poster is that it captures the retro feel, along with the odd and creepy chaos that the movie presents to the viewer. The background really makes the whole image for me.

This poster for the Rocky Balboa has two versions, one in red with white font and one white with red font. It isn’t my favorite style wise, but I do like the quote that they used. How much can you take?

This one was an easy one to get right, and they did. With the film all about Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of Facebook, all they had to do was utilize the logo design that was already there. They even got the way the formating of the front page was at the time it was created, though it has changed since then.

We have to go deeper. There was no reason for me to say that, except that I love this movie. It is about a group of people who take a job from a rich businessman bent of preventing a monopoly by a man who is taking over from his father. So they plan to go into his mind and plant a seed that would force him to split the company. But it is dangerous, as they have to go deeper than anyone ever has before.

The poster reminds me of Tron, or other 80’s era sci-fi movies. I love the way that they took such a blatantly modern film and gave it a touch of old fashioned typography.